Andrew  and I in the briefing room of the USS Yorktown, where outbound pilots received their missions... photo taken by our lovely friend Stu on his visit to Charleston :) 


"At birth we set sail with sealed orders."
                     -Soren Kierkegaard (arguably)


And with that, I best be about mine, as I'm faintly certain my orders have nothing to do with whoopsy-daisying around on the internet.

      I've been reading Carving Nature at Its Joints: Natural Kinds in Metaphysics and Science, which mentions The Celestial Emporium of Benelovent Knowledge, Borges' delicious classification of animals:

1. those that belong to the Emperor,
2. embalmed ones,
3. those that are trained,
4. suckling pigs,
5. mermaids,
6. fabulous ones,
7. stray dogs,
8. those included in the present classification,
9. those that tremble as if they were mad,
10. innumerable ones,
11. those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
12. others,
13. those that have just broken a flower vase,
14. those that from a long way off look like flies.

     Borges' essay famously "shattered... all the familiar landmarks of... thought" for Foucault.  You come across it fairly often reading the sort of mystico-philosophizing silliness I've long relished- but this reading inspired me to get cracking on my synopsis...  

      I decided to divide it up by characters in an invisible homage to Borges. 

      An earlier version was more dictionary-like, but I chickened out, thinking that might be a little risky.  I'm using this synopsis for submissions and my story is already a bit...  let's call it rowdy.  I'm probably going to have a horrible time placing it.   

      Anyway!  the synopsis... 
  

                                                       Evening’s Land: Book One  

1.  ADA WALKER: Conjurer, Autodidact.  Seventeen years old, her mind becomes a conduit into the Evening’s Land, which encompasses death and dreams.

2.  CHRISTOPHER ADGER: Ghost, Bon Vivant.  Christopher hung himself in order to escape the cult that murdered his father and has taken refuge from death in dreams.  He comes to Ada’s defense when demons begin trying to leach through her into the waking world.  Ada’s repeated conjuring makes him strong, and Christopher lusts to experience physicality once more.  

3.  OLIVER ROAMERY: Occultist, Enthraller.  The leader of Charleston’s powerful blood cult becomes aware of Ada’s magical strengths.  Roamery begins seducing MARY, Ada’s wayward mother, in order to get close to her daughter.

4.  JUPITER SNOWE: Ada’s friend, a Telepath, Descended of a Ghost.  When Jupiter visits Ada at home, things go awry: Ada has underestimated the hungers of Christopher.  He inhabits Jupiter’s body, taking the girl’s consciousness hostage.   Pretending to be Jupiter, Christopher seduces Ada, thrilling to the pleasures of flesh.  But Christopher’s bodysnatch sets off alarms in those who monitor the Evening’s Land, and Roamery sends emissaries to Ada’s house.  She escapes after a brawl while Christopher, still wearing the body of Jupiter Snowe, is taken hostage himself and brought to trial before Roamery.

5.  TOBIAS WALKER: Ada’s whimsical but elderly father. Genius, Innocent, Cuckold.  His wife missing, Tobias falls ill.  Ada rushes out of hiding to visit him in the hospital and is kidnapped by Roamery’s men.  Roamery, whose ambition is to become a god, commands Ada deliver him to hell via the conduit of her mind.    

6.  Ada and Roamery descend into the depths of the Land, where we learn Ada was conceived in dreams by HECATE, Lordess of Hell.  Hecate invites Ada to rule with her in the lower kingdom. Ada declines.  Roamery’s body is vacant during this conference and Christopher uses the opportunity to jump from Jupiter into Roamery, trapping Roamery’s consciousness within Ada’s own.  Hecate tells Ada that Roamery is her responsibility now.  But Roamery, unwilling tenant, is the equivalent of a personified mental illness.  Will Ada be able to control him?  

6.   Christopher, now wearing Roamery’s skin, is the seeming leader of the blood cult that murdered his father.  Jupiter, freed of him, swears vengeance on all phenomena.  Meanwhile Ada must nurse her father back to health… but how long can the earthly daughter of Hecate stay away from the Evening’s Land?

                                                                            ~o~

      Oot!  

      In other news, after binging BBC's Sherlock, I picked up the collected Sherlock Holmes stories.  They're wonderful, especially before bed.  

Lovely meditation here.

 2.814.   Saturday.

Cherry comes over about 11:30, and we walk down King Street, have huevos rancheros at Rarebit, then write all afternoon at  Blacktap.  She's got poreless, almost ceramic looking pale skin, and a white-blonde tuft of short hair, which she wears in a stylish poof, like a cockatoo, adding about three inches to her height.  Loud, adorable: we met her while she was working as a guard at a gallery opening a few months back.  She instantly become one of my dearest friends.  We're tapping away, and after a while CJ comes over, too- flushed from her bicycle ride, her long, coppery hair all a-tangle in her russet scarf, and the two of them chatter about love & Charleston, while I press on...  

Then we're wandering downtown, aimless and hungry.  Browsing antique stores, a gallery: we talk about paintings, painters, drug abuse, Philip Seymour Hoffman, drinking, the best drinks on deals- and so we end up at Husk on the bar side.  Exposed rafters and crumbly bricks.  Plushy rich-fellow chairs.  The most artfully crafted whiskey drinks I've had since the Manhattan Christian made for me at his birthday party- and the three of us get louder & louder, more and more flamboyant: the wealthy patrons are pleasantly scandalized by our talk: unsavory escapades and redemptions, geishas, Lamborghinis.  Drink drink drink.  Then cheeseburgers.

Then we're off to meet the boys: my Andrew & a lovely German engineer, Denis, who's heading back home to his village near the Rhine at the end of the month... and Zhenya, who is at Rarebit... aha, and the night comes full circle, I'm talking with Denis about fishing in Spain, in Germany; arguing with Zhenya's Aikido instructor, Trey, about what we agree to call 'the hugeness.'
 
I say that it is impossible to know anything with certainty until after death, at which point perhaps there is nothing to know- but his view is more faith based, metaphysics based, and so we go round and round...and the bar is loud and of course we have been drinking for hours.  End with hugs, confusion on the sidewalk; we're separated from Zhenya as we look for the hot dog stand.  Denis gets a late night love call, and Andrew & I are suddenly alone; the crowds have gone, we're walking home in the warm night, holding gleeful hands.

A few blocks later he recognizes some friends with a sausage stand- and they feed us exquisite things: a bratwurst made with cream & white pepper- sweet & tangy, toothsomely resistant sauerkraut.  All house made.  'Tomorrow, tomorrow,' we say; 'come over, we can watch the Olympics...'

2.9.14. Sunday.  

Brunch at CJ's with Cherry, Andrew & I; then a long walk through Magnolia.  Alligators & camellias. That night, an impromptu dinner with friends- with everyone from Saturday, including the sausage makers... so this is 30!

What would you think, someone said, as we drove home from Magnolia, if you’d known at 18 where you’d be, today?

To know I’d be with my Andrew in Charleston.  Andrew!  

He wasn’t even a speck in my eye when I was 18.  I remember meeting him when I was 19.  The way he looked at me, then.   I was with someone else, my high school sweetheart- if you’d told me then everything that would come- ah, wow-

Sometimes I write out a timeline for myself, to keep it all straight.  How can so much happen so quickly?  

I texted Andrew.  “Can you imagine if, when you were 18, you found out you’d end up in Charleston with me?”

Because while we knew of one another in our home town- he just was one of my brother’s innumerable friends.  Handsome, but jesus, so young!  Two years then was an an eternity of difference. 

-I, the shy, bookish redhead- and he, the devilish madman-

“Yes, duh!” he says.

I am the luckiest girl I know.

Of course my future now is as equally unimaginable to me now, as my present was to the girl-that-i-was...

And this makes me happy, and this makes me sad.

Is it possible to have many simultaneous truths?

The girl-that-i-was- I think she’d like me ok.  I've recognized my past self before- in another girl, a parallel girl, who was much younger than me.  She was 11, and I was-oh, I suppose I was 19.  I was in college, I was her nanny.  We looked for bird eggs because she wanted a pet raven, we told stories that never ended, we drew and giggled and rarely wore shoes-  

She’s a raving beauty now, a yogi queen.  Oh, Katherine!  Kitty Kat!  I think of you often still! 

(the quiet ones, we do love so deeply)

Yes, I think the child-I-was would like me-now.  I hope to live so that the ‘I” am will like me still, years from now, wherever I am going.

And Girl-I-was- would she like my friends now, if all of us were children?  

Yes- and I think we would have seceded from this civilization, to form another all our own- perhaps its just as well we were kept apart then.  

Or is it?

Someday, oh someday.  I want to have lots of land, and to make on it a village of arts, of philosophy, of freedom and intention.  

"-And this?”  I stroked the arrowhead she wore on her finger.  Smooth as ice, instantly warm to my touch.  She sank back against the tree, holding my hand.  

(O heavenly softness of girls!  Their necks sweet as candle wax—their weeping hair—!)  

“Once,” she said, “a long time ago, there were two women.  One white and one black, like the two sides of a chess board, but they were lovers.  They lived a lie, a charade of master and slave.  But when they were alone, it was the white who was slave and the black who was queen.  They loved so deeply that their love created a wild and separate thing: a child who existed only in dreams.  

And in their dreams the women would go to the child, and care for it.  And the child grew strong.  But the white woman began to wonder.  Could such a child be truly real?  She began to talk of it, in their waking hours, with her lover.  Her lover, who better understood such things, warned her never to speak of it.  To never speak of their blessings lest the gods overheard, and became envious.  But the white woman was obsessed,  she had to know.  One night, she brought a knife with her into dreams, to see if the child would bleed—”

“Always with the knives, your stories.”

“Hush.  So she pricked their child, and it did bleed.  Skeins of blood rained down around them. The heaven of their love fell to earth, and the baby with it.  This is the last of her.  This was her heart.  The heart of a love that was darker than onyx.”

“Their love couldn’t survive the world?”    

“Their love couldn’t survive her uncertainty.  She needed to believe, but ultimately, she couldn’t.  So she killed it.”

“People really kill what they don’t understand.”  

“People kill what frightens them.  Ideas, lovers.  Or they try to.  But I think the essence of a thing matters more than the thing itself.  Things can’t ever be truly, finally real.  Because things can be disassembled, consumed.  But an essence is eternal.”  

“So somewhere they love each other still, is that what you mean?”  

“If their love was real.”  Ada looked thoughtfully up at the tree.  “Ask me something else.”  The air was violet against her neck, making shadows beneath her lips, her eyes.  Her fur coat rustling, like late summer hay, golden in its last days before winter reaps all harvest.  I felt the chill humans have felt since the beginning of time.  Perhaps winter won’t come.  Perhaps these days will go on forever...

But the prickling air answered, wrapping its chill around my heart.  

But your winter will come.  

I squeezed Ada’s hand.  It was slippery, cooler now— or else mine was— and frantically said, “This one, tell me this one.”  The bracelet was silver, so delicately made it appeared to be woven, of cold flowers, of bones and claws.

“In another part of this world, there was a girl who fell in love with a wolf.  The wolf was bigger than a man, with hair the color of honey.  
                                                                                 ~o~  

            Ooo, I neglect this blog!  I really don't have the blogging temperament at all....
 
            Anyway- the above passage is from a section where Ada has begun to realize her powers, and she has a dalliance with a friend who isn't at all what she seems...

            I realized the other day that I've reached 53,438 words.  My goal is to round things off at about 66,000, so I'm close.   Close-ish.  And it wasn't that long ago that I deleted roughly 100 pages... so it's early to count chickens.  
           
           I recently finished Joyce Carol Oates' masterful Bellefleur-  which would have been even better if she'd nixed a couple chapters in the middle, when the book sags just a tiny bit.

           Not much new.  It's been cold, great for writing.  My new favorite spots are City Lights and  Twenty Six Divine.   We visited Savannah & Nashville.  


           Savannah: a little gritty, full of art and booze.  Gorgeous.  We met up with dear friends from Tucson who were staying nearby, visiting family. 
           Nashville was fantastic.  Andrew's beloved childhood buddy, John, got us a great deal on our flights.  We all stayed in a hotel within walking distance of downtown- we ate at Monell's famous family style chicken mansion, checked out some honky-tonks.  A happy whirlwind.
          Earlier this week had an awesome photoshoot with the darling Mariah Channing, restaging an Old Masters painting.  Super fun, as always.  I'll keep you posted. 
          I think the rest of today is going to be a writing in Magnolia Cemetary kind of day.  Off with me. 

Kimberly Witham, who has a cool, firm handshake and uses words like “whack-a-doodle,” wants you to know most of her work doesn’t actually involve taxidermy.


“Mostly,” she says, “the animals are just straight up dead.”

It’s chilly in Charleston, late in the afternoon, and she is wearing a yellow peacoat, a cozy sweater with large buttons, jeans and cowboy boots.  She has short blonde hair and a frank, wide-set gaze.

Pointing out a tiny cut on the belly of a silvery blue snake, she tells me she’s been photographing road kill since 2007.

“See, he was probably clipped by a lawnmower.  This one was interesting.  With roadkill, you know, most things are stuck in rigor.  But snakes are flexible.  They have a little give.  So I wrapped him in position around this vase with wire, and stuck him in the freezer.”

She stepped back, looking at it.  “But it’s amazing how fast snakes melt...”

Read the rest on the Redux blog...  

James Brendan Williams' show opens at Redux tomorrow evening- wine, music, artists in the wild.  It'll be fun, and you should come.  

                                                                                +++

In other news, here's a little excerpt... 


“Don’t scream,” it said.  It was an enormous animal, with palms softer than a man’s.  They lay face to face, their bodies touching under the quilt.  

His breath was sweet and pleasantly dusty, like hay, and Ada was not afraid.   

“Smart girl,” the wolf said, stretching out comfortably   “We can have a conversation if you don’t scream.  After all, it’s only a dream.”  His eyes were like velvet buttons.  “And what is at stake in a dream?”

                                                                               +++

"A young artist opens a door between the land of the living and the dead.  As Ada walks the divide, she falls in love with a dead man and becomes tangled into a Southern blood cult of lies and erotic ritual..."

The updated logline for my work-in-progress.   

I'm in New Orleans through the weekend, visiting my dear buddy.  Drinking juice outside a cafe on Magazine Street, stitching words into pages.  A perfect October afternoon: sunny, and sharpened with caffeine. 

Thank you, Hey Cafe, for reminding me of my favorite old coffee haunt in Tucson, where I wrote much of Astra!  

Interviewed a lovely new jazz artist in Charleston earlier this week, at one of the most sincere and super cozy coffeehouses I've ever been in.  Distillation (of interview) coming soon.